Rawhide: A Senior Thesis

Thursday, April 23, 2009

So, as you might know, I'm changing the middle of my film to black and white. I've got the colors down like I want them, but I can't figure out what to do with the blood. I want it to be red, but what shade? Here's a little thing I whipped up:

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

As you all know, figuring out color for this film has been a nuisance for me. Little did I know that actually coloring it would be more of a nuisance, and would take what I can only assume is years to fully complete. Averaging about 2 shots a day is not good when I have 77 to do by the end of the month. I think that math all adds up to not graduating.

So, I have a compromise: I'm going to color the two bookends of the film as planned. You know, all the stuff without zombies. Unless some miracle happens, and all that coloring gets done tomorrow or the next day, I'm going to leave the middle of my film black and white and gray. It'll be so much faster for me to just take out white backgrounds from my line drawings than to color them in fully and deal with the extra layers when compositing.

I'm actually totally fine with this - not that I'm referencing either of these films by doing this, but Night Of The Living Dead was in black and white, and Quentin Tarantino totally got away with making the most violent part of Kill Bill switch to black and white. I'd say I'm in pretty good company. The music in my film makes a really dramatic shift when the zombies come on screen, and I think the color switch would only complement that. It totally goes along with the tonal and genre switch. I think I even played with this idea early on, anyway. Let's say I did, and I'm bringing it back.

Anyway, it's almost 1 AM, and I'm about to fall asleep at my computer. This blog post is over. I'll try and remember to elaborate when I'm actually conscious.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

This is just something...fun? It's just the main character color keys for the people who are helping me color my film. It was just supposed to be some stupid drawings of the characters with messy coloring, but I ended up rendering them more than I intended to. Meh, it's something to post. If the zombie skin tone is too jarring or something, post a comment. If the blood color (as seen by the "Rawhide" and Zombie Damsel intestines) doesn't stand out, post a comment. I'm colorblind, so what do I know?

I lied in my last(?) post - that wasn't the final cut of my film. I've been watching it over and over again, and the finale really bothered me with all that extra footage where nothing happened...so I got rid of it. Michael Patterson told me to do the same thing, so I'm pretty sure that was a good idea. There are other minor edits along the way, too, but nothing too drastic. Anyway, here it is. I'm really only putting this here for my composer. Hi Alex! I sure hope Bethany doesn't kill me when I tell her about this tomorrow.

Monday, March 9, 2009

I'm in the middle of cleaning up all of my film, and it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would. This is typical, as I generally have no concept of time. Anyway, I'm thinking of what this means, and I have two options: take longer than usual on the clean-up and don't fully color the film, or pull a string of all-nighters to get myself back on schedule (maybe). I think I choose the former.

This is actually probably a good thing considering my original idea for this film's color was to have it be like a tri-tone sepia and that was it. I tried to do that when doing my color keys, but I have limited knowledge of color (I blame it on the colorblindness), so more and more kept creeping in.

Anyway, this way the coloring will go faster, the people coloring for me will be less confused, and everything will generally be easier for me...I like it! Oh man, think about how much easier the backgrounds will be! I could even stylize the way they're colored, which sounds pretty fantastic.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

I realize that the horse should turn more, and that there's a black spot, and that the sky shot should probably have birds reacting to the gun shots, and other things, but let's just enjoy this for now, shall we?

Friday, February 27, 2009

So my film is finally picture locked. I'd have a sample of it up here for you, but the file is over a gig. I'll render out a new one before I leave the lab and then I guess upload it here tomorrow when I'm back down here to give my gig file to Bethany. Great! Time to start clean-up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ugh.